Design Systems Lead

Design Systems Lead - Contract - Vienna, VA/Hybrid - $45.00 - $47.19/hr.

The final salary or hourly wage, as applicable, paid to each candidate/applicant for this position is ultimately dependent on a variety of factors, including, but not limited to, the candidate's/applicant's qualifications, skills, and level of experience as well as the geographical location of the position.

Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States. Sponsorship not available.

Our client is seeking a Design Systems Lead in Vienna, VA/Hybrid.

ROLE DESCRIPTION

The Platform Design Systems Lead curates and advances the design-system experience for a specific product platform, ensuring that platform-level patterns, components, design tokens, documentation, and implementation guidance align with CMD+R and broader enterprise design-system direction. This role bridges design, engineering, product, accessibility, and leadership within the platform to keep experiences usable, scalable, accessible, and consistent.

Platform Strategy & Leadership
Define and evolve the platform design-system roadmap in alignment with product goals, platform priorities, accessibility expectations, and CMD+R enterprise guidance.
Champion design-system adoption within the assigned platform, driving consistent use of approved patterns, tokens, components, documentation, and contribution practices.
Represent platform needs, constraints, and feedback in design-system conversations, helping ensure CMD+R guidance can be translated into practical platform implementation.
Provide leadership-level recommendations on platform design-system priorities, risks, technical gaps, adoption barriers, and opportunities to improve delivery workflows.

Collaboration & Governance
Partner with platform design, engineering, product, accessibility, and enterprise design-system stakeholders to ensure platform solutions meet user, business, accessibility, and implementation needs.
Maintain platform-level governance models, contribution workflows, intake practices, decision criteria, and scalable processes that complement CMD+R rather than duplicate or replace it.
Facilitate conversations between designers, developers, and leadership to align expectations, clarify ownership, and improve end-to-end design-to-development handoff within the platform.
Escalate cross-platform or enterprise-impacting questions to the appropriate CMD+R or enterprise design-system partners for alignment and decision support.

Technical Enablement & Engineering Partnership
Apply working knowledge of front-end technologies to evaluate implementation feasibility, review platform design-system technical needs, and support effective collaboration with engineering partners.
Partner with front-end engineers to ensure platform patterns, tokens, and components are implementable, accessible, performant, reusable, and aligned with CMD+R standards and platform realities.
Support CI/CD and release-process improvements for platform design-system assets by collaborating on build, test, documentation, versioning, dependency management, and deployment workflows.
Identify technical gaps in platform component libraries, token pipelines, documentation, and handoff practices; recommend practical improvements that support designers and engineers.
Translate design-system patterns and tokens into platform implementation guidance, examples, or lightweight prototypes as needed, using modern front-end concepts without making hands-on feature development the primary focus of the role.

SKILLS & REQUIREMENTS

5+ years of experience in design systems, product design, design operations, front-end engineering, or a related digital product discipline.
Proven track record of leading, governing, or significantly contributing to design-system adoption for a product area, platform, or large-scale digital experience.
Working knowledge of front-end technologies such as HTML, CSS/SCSS, JavaScript/TypeScript, and modern component frameworks or libraries such as React or Vue; ability to collaborate with engineers and evaluate technical feasibility is required, while deep hands-on coding is not the primary role expectation.
Familiarity with design token management, theming systems, component-library architecture, and cross-platform implementation considerations.
Understanding of CI/CD concepts relevant to design-system delivery, including build, test, release, versioning, documentation, dependency, and quality-check workflows.
Ability to identify technical and process gaps, translate them into clear recommendations, and collaborate with designers, developers, product partners, accessibility stakeholders, enterprise design-system partners, and leadership to improve platform workflows.
Experience partnering with front-end engineering teams on component-library workflows, design token pipelines, CI/CD practices, platform release governance, or documentation automation.
Hands-on experience creating front-end prototypes, implementation examples, or component documentation using HTML, CSS/SCSS, JavaScript/TypeScript, React, Vue, or similar technologies.
Experience supporting a hybrid design-system model where enterprise guidance is adapted into platform-specific implementation and adoption practices.
5+ years in Design Systems or DesignOps
Figma expert
Design Tokens / Component Libraries
Storybook and/or Zeroheight
Accessibility (WCAG)
HTML/CSS/JavaScript/React knowledge
Design-to-development collaboration
Governance and adoption leadership
Enterprise-scale platform experience
Strong communication and stakeholder management
Not looking for a traditional UX designer.

Benefits/Other Compensation

Medical, Dental, Life Insurance, 401K.

Why Hays?

You will be working with a professional recruiter who has intimate knowledge of the industry and market trends. Your Hays recruiter will lead you through a thorough screening process in order to understand your skills, experience, needs, and drivers. You will also get support on resume writing, interview tips, and career planning, so when there's a position you really want, you're fully prepared to get it.

Nervous about an upcoming interview? Unsure how to write a new resume?

Visit the Hays Career Advice section to learn top tips to help you stand out from the crowd when job hunting.

Hays is committed to building a thriving culture of diversity that embraces people with different backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences. We believe that the more inclusive we are, the better we serve our candidates, clients, and employees. We are an equal employment opportunity employer, and we comply with all applicable laws prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, creed, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, or gender identity), age, national origin or ancestry, physical or mental disability, veteran status, marital status, genetic information, HIV-positive status, as well as any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law. One of Hays' guiding principles is 'do the right thing'.
We also believe that actions speak louder than words.
In that regard, we train our staff on ensuring inclusivity throughout the entire recruitment process and counsel our clients on these principles. If you have any questions about Hays or any of our processes, please contact us.

In accordance with applicable federal, state, and local law protecting qualified individuals with known disabilities, Hays will attempt to reasonably accommodate those individuals unless doing so would create an undue hardship on the company. Any qualified applicant or consultant with a disability who requires an accommodation in order to perform the essential functions of the job should call or text .

Drug testing may be required; please contact a recruiter for more information.

#LI-DNI